Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-fixed-point-methods-for-nonlinear-partial-differential-equations-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2023/2/b/ii/solution

Let . For , define by
The Lax-Milgram theorem guarantees a unique : the bilinear form on the left is bounded and coercive in the norm , and the right side is a bounded linear functional by the Poincaré inequality. Testing with gives
Define by . This actually maps into . Indeed the weak maximum principle says that a weak solution of is nonnegative almost everywhere. Here and belongs to . Directly, taking the negative part as a test function gives , so by the Poincaré inequality.
The required fixed point formulation is
Every such fixed point belongs automatically to and satisfies part (b)(i). Conversely, uniqueness in the Lax-Milgram theorem makes every nonnegative weak solution a fixed point of .

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